I am now getting right royally pee'd off with the extreme polarisation of any debate whatsoever on the radio. Specifically Radio 5 Live, and even more specifically, Nicky "I'd argue with my dead cat" Campbell.
Today there were a whole raft of people ranting on about their own personal experience of one or maybe a couple of families on their estates (or more likely who they had read about in the Daily Mail) who are playing the benefit system. They then proceeded to extrapolate their flimsy uninformed argument onto the entire population of people on benefits. What tosh.
What they all failed to appreciate - including the lady who was working against child poverty, incidentally - is that the number of families claiming more than £26,000 a year in benefits will be extremely tiny indeed. (Jack Straw knew it, though. Well done Jack). I'd like to see some proper statistics on that.
Any right-minded individual will agree that limiting benefits for large unemployed families in huge houses will be a bit of a nail in the alleviating-child-poverty coffin, at least for their particular army of feral children.
However, to be fair I think that punishing these kids for the sins of their promiscuous child-farming parents is obviously not a good thing. I therefore suggest that if the benefit cap goes ahead, then as a country we need a counter-policy to lift all children out of child-poverty for ever.
And what is this policy? Simple, really. Set a legally-binding, wholly-enforceable minimum threshold of £300 per week for pocket-money.
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